"You Would Think You Were In America"

EXHIBITION : HOUSE AND HOME

About this Item

Not By Bricks Alone is a programme that looks at Dublin suburban housing. What is it like to live in the suburban housing estates of Ballyfermot or Santry or the new tower blocks of Ballymun?

Title

Not By Bricks Alone

1st Broadcast

21/11/1969

Contributor

Colin Bird (Reporter)
Sean Egan (Producer)

Clip Duration

00:23:26

Material Type

Video

Series title

Horizon

Clip title

"You Would Think You Were In America"

Extended description

Not By Bricks Alone is a programme about suburban housing in Dublin. The programme looks at the good and bad housing developments built since 1948 and gets the experiences of people living in Ballyfermot, Santry and Ballymun.

Adelaide Waldron talks about living on the fourteenth floor of a Ballymun tower block. Vonnie Evans who lives in Santry and John Sweeney who has lived for 21 years in Ballyfermot talk about the lack of planning and the feeling of isolation living in these housing estates. All three residents talk of the poor planning and lack of thought for those who are going to live in these new developments. They describe a lack of community felt by many living in modern urban houses.

Architect, Kenneth Madden, community social worker, Inga Muse, psychiatrist, Dr Ivor Browne and priest, Father Eugene Kennedy give their professional opinions on these housing developments. They discuss the building of the wrong type of houses. Houses that are often badly designed and cramped. The lack of the involvement of people who will live in the houses at the planning stage.

What effect are modern housing developments having on the people who live in them? The programme shows women at work in the home and footage of Ballymun, Ballyfermot and Santry.

Information

'Horizon' was first aired on RTÉ Televion on Sunday 20 September, 1964. The programme was described in the RTÉ Guide as a weekly series on matters of religious interest, presenting a variety of topics drawn from Ireland and abroad. This episode of 'Not By Brick Alone' was broadcast 21 November 1969. A number of small edits have been made to the programme shown here for reasons of copyright.

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